Teaching Materials

Working with visiting music teachers

The place of peripatetic music staff (or visiting music teachers, as they're now more commonly known) is a notoriously grey area for schools and heads of music. Who is responsible for them? Are they...

Teaching Materials

OCR A level AoS5: Programme music

Teaching programme music should be the fun bit. It's where music is at its most descriptive and vivid, with an obvious narrative that offers an ideal launch point into the exploration of so many core...

Teaching Materials

Maintaining classroom instruments

Music departments tend to be full of ‘stuff’ – chances are, the more music there is happening in the school, the more equipment there is. Looking after all of this equipment is likely to fall to...

Teaching Materials

Creativity at Key Stage 3

With graded instrumental repertoire widely available, and three out of four GCSE exam boards linking standards to an equivalent grade, there can be a bias towards performing at KS3 as the means to...

Teaching Materials

OCR AoS1: Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23

The aim of this resource is to cover both the usual areas required for examination, as well as offering some more context that might provoke wider exploration beyond the prescribed work and enhance...

Teaching Materials

KS3 activities for the summer term

Below are some one-off lessons and ideas for those times where you find yourself in a room without instruments, with a bank of computers, or missing half the class, any of which can stop your current...

Teaching Materials

Approaches to classical music at KS3

My students might be resistant to classical music. How can I get them on side? I want to keep things practical, and don't want to turn my lessons into a music history lecture or old-fashioned music...

Teaching Materials

Revising for AS and A level music exams

This is the third of three resources designed to help students revise effectively and positively for this summer's written music exams. The first (Music Teacher, March 2019) was a general resource,...

Teaching Materials

Teaching blues at KS3

Teaching blues at KS3 has become something of an old chestnut. However, there is a lot of value to be had from including it in your KS3 plans.

Teaching Materials

The story of the symphony, part 3: from Mahler to the moderns

In part two to this three-part resource (March 2019), we saw how Romantic composers of all creative persuasions, whether nationalist or individualist, took up the challenge of extending Beethoven's...

Teaching Materials

Revising for GCSE music exams

This resource is intended to provide activities and ideas for students that will help them to revise effectively for the summer GCSE music exam, and it follows a resource on general strategies for...

Teaching Materials

Mentoring a trainee or newly qualified teacher

Mentoring a trainee music teacher or newly qualified teacher can be hard work and time-consuming. But it is also incredibly rewarding, and is guaranteed to make you reflect on your own practice. With...

Teaching Materials